Paper Handling devices are used to transport various types of documents (paper sheets, envelopes, postcards, etc.) to individual document processing stations. One type of processing station includes a printing device that prints information on the documents in a specified location. Accordingly, the proper registration of the document upon delivery to the printing device is very important in order to ensure that printing occurs at the specified location.
A particular paper-handling device where the proper registration of a transported document is very important is a mailing machine. A mailing machine includes a feeder having an input hopper section into which mailpieces are placed. The feeder is part of the overall mailing machine transport system which delivers the mailpieces to a printing device (postage meter) that prints an evidence of postage (postage indicium) and possibly various bar codes on the mailpiece. Such bar codes can include a facer identification mark (FIM) or cryptographically secure data that is used by the postal authority to verify the authenticity of the printed postage indicium. The postal authority typically has very specific requirements as to the printed location of each of the aforementioned pieces of information that may appear on the mailpiece. The specified locations assist the postal authority in having automated equipment that can detect and read each piece of information printed on the mailpiece. Accordingly, delivering the mailpiece to the printing device in a correctly registered orientation is extremely important.
In prior mailing machines, a side guide was used to register mailpieces against a registration wall in the hopper section. These conventional side guides were typically rigidly fastened to a sliding frame and could be moved toward and away from the registration wall. Thus, as mailpieces were placed in the hopper, the side guide was pushed against the outboard edges of the mailpieces until the inboard edges of the mailpieces became registered against the registration wall.
While the prior side guides effectively initially registered the mailpieces in the hopper, it was often the case that the contact between the side guide and the outboard edges of the mailpieces created excessive drag on the mailpieces as the feeder attempted to transport the mailpieces downstream toward the printing device. The excessive drag would cause the mailpieces to become askew relative to the registration wall resulting in mailpieces that were delivered to the printing device in an improperly registered orientation. As a result, the printed matter was not be printed in the proper location on the mailpiece possibly leading to the failure of the information to be detected and read by the postal authority""s automated equipment. In a worst case scenario, it was possible that the mailpiece would be delivered to the printing device outside of a xe2x80x9cprint zonexe2x80x9d such that no information would be printed on the mailpiece. This would lead to mailpieces being rejected for lack of postage payment (no printed postage indicium) when indeed the postage meter had accounted for the required postage.
Thus, what is needed is a side guide that can be used to properly register documents and which self-adjusts to eliminate the excessive drag problem discussed above.
A self-adjusting side guide for a document-handling machine having a feed deck along which documents are transported is provided. The self-adjusting side guide includes a first member mounted for movement along the feed deck toward and away from the documents; a guide wall mechanism operatively connected to the first member for movement relative to the first member; and a biasing device that applies a biasing force that biases the guide wall into a first position relative to the first member. The side guide operates such that at times when an external force sufficient to move the first member along the feed deck in the direction of the documents is applied to the guide wall mechanism, the guide wall mechanism moves toward the documents against the biasing force from the first position to a second position relative to the first member without any movement of the first member toward the documents.